ON A BICYLE MADE FOR TWO

My neighbour Annie and I used to work for the same consultancy firm back in the nineties and we both became friendly with the firm's librarian and researcher, Verna, who worked in the company's Edinburgh office.  We all used to meet once a year at the Christmas Party - a dinner and disco affair at some country inn in which we (and spouses too) were put up for the night.  The party went on until lunch the next day.

I hadn't seen Verna and her husband for more than a dozen years, although we had exchanged Christmas cards.  She and her husband are great cyclists, or rather they are great tandemists, possessing two tandems (lightweight and heavyweight - obviously -) on which they tour, not only their own country, but other people's as well.  They have even ridden across part of America, I understand.

Thus far they have never managed to tandem into Wales however, so it was with great pleasure that Annie informed me that they had announced their intention to come and that she was putting them up for a couple of days. We all had dinner together last night and they asked me if I could provide an itinerary of about 30 miles for them to cycle around today.

We are blessed here in the Vale of Glamorgan with a wealth of interests.  What to choose? I sent them to a Neolithic burial cairn (two if they don't mind a small detour); a power station; an interesting old stone town and the site of Wales' first monkish university;  the castle bought and restored by newspaper proprietor Randolph Hearst which now houses an international school and has gardens that run down to the sea; the lightouses and spectacular seascapes at Nash Point; the village of Ewenny whence came the yew wood for the longbows for Agincourt and the interior of whose priory was captured in a painting in the 1780's by Turner and which hasn't change one jot since;  the haunted Pwllgwrach, around which you can hear foxhounds baying on windy nights in winter (legend has it that at the same time that Turner was painting his picture of Ewenny the then hunt master at Pwllgwrach was being hunted and torn to pieces by his hounds for the crime of getting a poor servant lass in the family way and, according to some accounts,  murdering her as well).  Until recently the house was lived in by the Agatha Christie's nephew to whom were bequeathed all the rights to 'The Mousetrap.'  

The house also boasts a quintail, which, in case you don't know, is a bit of jousting equipment - a white metal figure with a sword that can swivel around a vertical pole.  This you gallop towards with your lance under your right arm and the object of the exercise is to strike the quintail in its exact centre.  If you do this then nothing happens: you can count yourself lucky and proceed to the jousting tournament. But should you miss and strike the quintail off centre then the device swings around and the quintail clobbers you with its sword as you go past.   Thus at the price of a sore back you progress.

I did offer them the Roman silver mines as well, but as these lie on the A48 (which Verna thought sounded excessively like a main road) they eschewed them.  In fact you can't actually see anything; you have to be told that somewhere in that bank beneath the gorse bushes you may discover a drift, long since collapsed or filled in, where once folk with names like Caractacus and Spartacus hacked their way into the limestone in search of silver for their goblets and lead for their central heating.

We shall have to see how the intrepid couple get on.  They are coming here for aperitifs this evening and no doubt some tapas type food as well and if the sunshine continues we shall sit in the garden.  Judging from the clouds however the weather forecast may be right and at seven o'clock we shall be watching the rain.

I cannot leave the subject of tandeming, however, with mentioning that I once had a chance to ride (and unfortunately wreck) a four-wheeled tandem, made from two ordinary bicycles welded together and with some clever linkage that turned the handlebars in parallel.  It was like a four-wheeled tricycle, I suppose, and was painted a rich burgundy colour.  Sadly, one day when I was riding the contraption alone - my friend who had built it had ridden it over to my house - I went around a corner too fast, whereupon the wheels simply buckled.  The sensation (to continue with the jousting theme) was not unlike a horse falling beneath you. You see you can't lean over on such a four-wheeled contraption and a bicycle wheel has no sideways strength.  So that was the end of my tandeming career and I have never been on another multiple person machine, although Verna did say that she would let me have a go on hers.  I wonder if she should trust me?

The picture, I am afraid, is not from the family collection but is courtesy of the ever dependable Wikipedia